For the past four years, Birma Devi Kunwar has been weaving her way up and down the hilly pathways in Darchula District in Nepal’s remote far-west, a vaccine box perched firmly on her back. Birma is responsible for periodically collecting vaccines from the vaccine store in the district headquarters of Khalanga and taking them to the Pipalchauri Health Post in Duhun – located in the upper reaches of the district – where she works as a support staff.
Even before the Taliban entered the capital city, Kabul, on 15 August, the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan was one of the worst in the world.
Nearly half of the country’s 40 million people needed humanitarian assistance. More than half of all children under age 5 were likely to face acute malnutrition. Over 1,600 civilians were killed and more than 3,000 injured in the first half of the year.
The children of families who were affected by the massive earthquake which devastated large parts of south-west Haiti in August this year are receiving free hot meals at school as part of an initiative by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to support the recovery of the country’s most vulnerable communities.
The just closed Climate Conference in Glasgow COP 26 coincided with an important milestone on Montenegro’s development path – its 30th anniversary of declaring itself as an ecologic state. Nothing speaks more about the strength of such commitment than Montenegro’s determination to embed it into the heart of its Constitution.
In Mexico City, over 500 participants from 50 countries adopted a strategic roadmap for the International Decade of the Indigenous Languages. Indigenous communities have become the leading forces that advance and ensure full empowerment and inclusion, equal and meaningful participation, and much more.
According to a recent UN report, climate change is happening at a faster pace than previously thought. That’s nothing new in the Western Balkans, which is considered one of the world’s hotspots of climate change.
Haiti faces a number of “races against the clock” to deal with crises which, if left unaddressed, could have serious negative consequences for the country’s long-term future, according to the UN’s most senior humanitarian and development official in the country.
When armed conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014, it was the start of a tumultuous and insecure era. Many Ukrainians left everything behind in search of safety. They didn’t know if or when they would return.
Jordan was the first country in the Arab world to adopt a right to information legislation in 2007. Despite strong leadership on this issue, Jordan has faced unique challenges in its implementation with no regional model to follow or best practices to emulate.
It’s time to say: enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.
